A generation of web-based communities and hosted services exist that facilitate collaboration and sharing between users. Examples of such web-based community and hosted service applications include social networks, wikis, weblogs, and folksonomies. Web-based community and hosted service applications typically allow for greater interaction and functionality between users, data, and providers.
Web-based community and hosted service applications are associated with several key principles and characteristics. First, the applications may use the “network as a platform” model, in which applications are accessed by users entirely through a web browser. For example, a web-based word processing utility may allow users to create, edit, update, and delete documents without installing the utility on a personal computer or saving the documents to the personal computer. Second, users of web-based community and hosted service websites or applications often own the data on the website or application and have control over the data. For example, in a photo sharing site, each user can upload images and specify preferences regarding access to the images.
In addition, web-based community and hosted service applications encourage users to add value to the applications by using the applications. Wikis and discussion forums specifically leverage the knowledge and/or opinions of a large number of users to provide services and/or solutions. Web-based community websites also tend to provide an interactive, user-friendly interface with rich Internet applications. Examples of rich Internet applications include virtual desktops within browsers, webmail clients that resemble standalone personal information managers, and web-based office suites.
While value may be added to web applications by facilitating and encouraging user input, unrestricted user access and input may detract from the overall quality, usability, and integrity of web-based community and hosted service applications.